Our Arms Fill With Miracles
by ragtime tune
Summary: His best friend is dead, and he finds himself there again, hay prickly against the back of his neck. A love story, flawed like they are.


**Our Arms Fill With Miracles**, PG. Melchior and Wendla. His best friend is dead, and he finds himself there again, hay prickly against the back of his neck.

* * *

_yes, a heart should always go one step too far  
come the morning and the day winding like dreams  
_"go places" the new pornographers

-

He finds himself there again, in the cool darkness. The hay is prickly against the back of his neck and he can hear the pitter-pat of watery footsteps marching on and on outside. He's separate from that, safe inside the hayloft. The air is stale and it hangs limply, the weight of memory tugging on it, pulling it down. He and Moritz used to fall back against the hay, laying side-by-side as sunlight streamed in, making the specks of hay that floated in the air glow. It shimmered, way back then. The whole world shimmered, and golden halos surrounded their perfect, beautiful heads.

He doesn't hear her climbing up the ladder, doesn't notice her settling down beside him until she softly says, "Melchior?"; his name like a question.

Melchior's head jerks toward her, still beautiful but no longer perfect. All the smiling sunshine was stolen from her, as he became a thief. She's soaked to the bone, hair sticking to her forehead and dress clinging to her body. Her mouth is set into the same line everyone's is, lips caging words she was taught not to say, arms trapping movements she was taught not to do.

Children grow up so fast these days.

"Melchior?" she says again, reaching out to touch his shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

"It isn't your fault, Wendla," he tells her stockinged leg.

She tips his chin up so he has to meet her eyes. "Still." Her fingers are light and cool against his forehead, smoothing his brow. "It's terrible, Melchi. You shouldn't be here alone. He was your best friend."

Her voice cuts too close; it's too soon, he's too raw. He turns his head away. Her fingers slide down his cheek, his neck, his shoulders, brushing stray pieces of hay off of him.

"It isn't your fault, either," she whispers into the darkness, birds flying out of their cage, the soft fluttering of wings echoing in the hayloft as they escape into the musty air.

She can see his fears written all over his body, tattooed into every shift in his eyes, every furrow of his brows.

His shoulders tense under her hand. This is what he tells himself, steadily, like the drum of rain on the roof. It isn't his fault his best friend died. It isn't _his_ fault, it _isn't_. But then there's Moritz's ghost in all the empty places: the desk next to his, the window across from his, the right side of the path. The emptiness hurts more than the headstone behind the church.

Melchior's head tells him to blame _them_ — everything _they_ did to Moritz, everything that drove him over that precarious edge. Melchior only gave him the _truth_; only armed him against ignorance.

_But the lies didn't destroy him, did they?_ comes a whisper from his heart. It makes him sick, because of course he didn't kill his friend, of course he can't shoulder the blame — that's not his responsibility, even if he sometimes wants to it be. He can't be reasonable with the whisper, can't lecture to it; it's seeped into his brain and haunts him everywhere Moritz is not.

Wendla reaches for his hand, entwining her small fingers with his rougher, larger ones.

Pulls him up towards the sky, like he pulled her up towards the too-hot sun.

Says, "Melchior. It isn't your fault."

Presses her lips against his cheek, like he pressed his hand against her breast.

Says, "Don't think like that."

A breath escapes him, one he's been holding for days, it seems, as Wendla wraps her arms around his neck. He buries his face in her shoulder, inhaling the smell of puddle water and openness. She holds him close, the simple beat of her heart a soothing rhythm against chaos. The memory of golden air swirling around the hayloft is somehow less distant.

She shares the rain with him. It soaks through his shirt and to his skin, a promise that the world is still growing outside, even if it came to a stop in his own head.

"Wendla," he breathes into her dress.

Her hand comes up to rest on top of his head, fingers stroking through his hair. His mouth forms the words _thank you_ against the curve of her neck.

He's surprised to find her blurry when he looks back up at her. He'd forgotten that he was allowed to break, that he could reach out and have a hand take his. Wendla brushes his tears away with her thumbs, gently. She kisses him, and there's still a newness to it, a kind of uncertainty. It's flawed just like they are, here in this place where gold surrounds them even though it's too dark to tell.

The kiss lingers in the emptiness between them, their foreheads pressed together.


End file.
